Le petit avocat ((MS2011-3223-035))
Dublin Core
Title
Le petit avocat ((MS2011-3223-035))
Subject
Description
French language song text from VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223-035 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Pp. 31.
“Le petit avocat” (“The Little Lawyer”) is a version of a traditional French song which has been in circulation since at least 1724. Versions of the song have been documented in France and Quebec, as well as New Brunswick. This version is virtually identical to that published under the title “Le p’tit avocat” in abbé Charles-Émile Gadbois’s 1948 compilation, Les cent plus belles chansons.
Gadbois (1906-1981) was a Quebecois priest, musician, publisher, composer, and impresario. After extensive musical studies, he was ordained as a priest in 1930 and taught at the St-Hyacinthe Seminary. In 1937, influenced by the Congrès de la langue française held in Quebec City, Gadbois established La Bonne Chanson in order to disseminate “good” songs to inculcate French-Canadian and Franco-American families with the Quebec Catholic church’s vision of piety, morality, family values, anti-modernism, nostalgia for the idyllic peasant life, and the virtues of the French language, love of country, and attachment to France. Gadbois worked tirelessly to promote La Bonne Chanson, organizing chorales, commercial sound recordings, radio programs, festivals, contests, and congresses, including those at the Montreal Forum (1942), the Quebec Coliseum (1943), and in Lewiston, Maine (1944). The Bonne chanson series was widely disseminated in Franco-American New England as well as Quebec.
Another very similar version of this song text appears later in this manuscript under the title “A s’etait un petit cordonnier.”
“Le petit avocat” (“The Little Lawyer”) is a version of a traditional French song which has been in circulation since at least 1724. Versions of the song have been documented in France and Quebec, as well as New Brunswick. This version is virtually identical to that published under the title “Le p’tit avocat” in abbé Charles-Émile Gadbois’s 1948 compilation, Les cent plus belles chansons.
Gadbois (1906-1981) was a Quebecois priest, musician, publisher, composer, and impresario. After extensive musical studies, he was ordained as a priest in 1930 and taught at the St-Hyacinthe Seminary. In 1937, influenced by the Congrès de la langue française held in Quebec City, Gadbois established La Bonne Chanson in order to disseminate “good” songs to inculcate French-Canadian and Franco-American families with the Quebec Catholic church’s vision of piety, morality, family values, anti-modernism, nostalgia for the idyllic peasant life, and the virtues of the French language, love of country, and attachment to France. Gadbois worked tirelessly to promote La Bonne Chanson, organizing chorales, commercial sound recordings, radio programs, festivals, contests, and congresses, including those at the Montreal Forum (1942), the Quebec Coliseum (1943), and in Lewiston, Maine (1944). The Bonne chanson series was widely disseminated in Franco-American New England as well as Quebec.
Another very similar version of this song text appears later in this manuscript under the title “A s’etait un petit cordonnier.”
Abstract
[refrain: turn my wheel, turn, turn, turn]; singer relates story of a little lawyer who carried his hat under his arm; he went into an inn, asked to eat; they gave him fish and he swallowed a fish bone and unfortunately died; he was taken to church and after the service, they put him into the grave and on his tombstone inscribed: here lies a little lawyer.
Source
VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3223 Alice Lacourse Danis Songbook. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America
Song Item Type Metadata
Supplied Title
Le petit avocat
Standard Title Reference
L’avocat gourmand I, P-18
L’avocat gourmand 11318
Tranlsated Title
The Little Lawyer
First Line
C’etait un petit avocat tourne ma roulette vire vire vire
Scribe
Transcription
C’etait un petit avocat tourne ma roulette vire vire vire
C’etait un petit avocat tourne ma roulette virons la
Coplet son p’tit chapeau sous son bras. Tourne ,a roulette
Vire vire vire son p’tit chapeau sous son bras tourne ma roulette et virons la
2 dans un auberge il entra
3 a manger il demanda
4 du poisson on lui donna
5 une arête il avala
6 par malheur il en creva
7 a l’eglise on le porta
8 un service on lui chanta
9 dans la fosse on le deposa
10 Sur sa tombe on ecriva
11 ci git le p’tit avocat
C’etait un petit avocat tourne ma roulette virons la
Coplet son p’tit chapeau sous son bras. Tourne ,a roulette
Vire vire vire son p’tit chapeau sous son bras tourne ma roulette et virons la
2 dans un auberge il entra
3 a manger il demanda
4 du poisson on lui donna
5 une arête il avala
6 par malheur il en creva
7 a l’eglise on le porta
8 un service on lui chanta
9 dans la fosse on le deposa
10 Sur sa tombe on ecriva
11 ci git le p’tit avocat
Files
Collection
Citation
“Le petit avocat ((MS2011-3223-035)),” Vermont Folklife Center Digital Collections, accessed April 29, 2025, https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/801.
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